I'm really sorry, fellow vidders, but I just *had* to let it all out.


Dear assholes thieves,

Stop it.
Just stop it.
I've seriously had enough of it.

Now I'm going to say this one more time and MAKE SURE YOU UNDERSTAND THIS FUCKING DEAL ONCE AND FOR ALL.

DON'T STEAL OUR CLIPS.

How hard is it for you to understand? Why do you think most (if not all) video websites have something like "Vid clip theft will not be tolerated" in at least one of their pages?
Why do you think we call it stealing? Do you think it's nice? What society are you from where stealing is nice???

Vidding is not easy.
It's not easy at all. It takes a great deal of effort from our part to make vids, and I'm not talking about marterpieces or anything, I'm talking vids in general. Vidding is not just finding a song that fits this or that movie/series/character/whatever. So lets go through all the basic steps of vidding so hopefully you'll get the idea, shall we?

1) Finding the song
Ok, that's hard, I admit it. Sometimes it's already in your head and you have an epiphany or anything, but most of the time you see vidders digging everywhere, looking for good songs anywhere they can find them, looking for inspiration.

2) Ripping
That's the part you guys don't seem to get. Ripping is basically getting the scenes you need to your computer, but apparently you don't understand just how tiring this is.
Of course it can only work if you have a DVD drive on your computer, or a capture card or anything, and yes, that means money. We spend money buying the DVD drive, buying the DVDs themselves, and buying the editing programs, and we do exactly what you people don't do, which is ASKING SOMEONE FOR HELP, someone who has been vidding for some time, some vidder you admire, some webmaster of a site you visit often, or simply searching around the internet for tutorials or sites that give guides on how to rip DVDs. We did that, so why can't you?
Now, the ripping itself takes some HOURS, and I don't mean hours of searching/downloading (though they might take quite some time). So we may include patience to our list of what is required for vidding.

However, lets say you really don't have money to buy the editing programs. Did you ever have a proper look at your computer? 'Cause, seriously, if you have the codecs to play all the videos you download, then you MUST have an editing program on your computer already.
"Movie Maker" actually makes movies... seriously. I'm not kidding.

And, finally...

3) Editing
Now we come to a topic that sets us further apart.
Editing is probably the toughest part of all. It might just take a few hours, but it can go on for months. Now, you don't get just how tricky a simple cut can be, do you?
Cutting one scene to another can have a number of different meanings in a vid, like placing two similar scenes together, following the beat of the song, creating a whole different scene, setting a mood for the video (yup, cuts play a huge part in that), or maybe just following the lyrics, but there are plenty of others that I won't bother remembering right now.
You guys, however, don't ever stop and think about it 'cause everytime you use an edit of ours, the cutting is already done.


Mind you, this is just the basics. There's A LOT more to it and I don't feel like explaining every single thing right now 'cause I'm still pissed at that e-mail I got today.


So now I'm going to enter the topic that some thieves use as an excuse to what they're doing.

Just because we're making videos it doesn't mean we're stealing anything from the movies, people!
Fade to Black gives a very good explanation, and here's something maybe you didn't know:

"Up to 5 mins per 1 hour of video/film shot can be used by ANYONE for promotional, spoofs, commentaries, or examples. So for television this works out to about 4 mins for a 45 min episode...not too bad."

We're not stealing by making our vids.
We're doing fan work, it's a tribute to the song/movie/series/etc, we're doing this because we love them.
Not to mention one of the reasons we're using scenes from the movies is because we can't go to the set, ask the crew if they can lend us one of their cameras and shoot or own scenes! And we try our best to make the scenes fit our idea, by cropping the screen, using scenes from different movies, whatever... Creativity also plays a major part in making vids.


Did you guys get the idea here? Vidding is not simple, all vidders have to work hard to make the best videos they can. We share experiences, knowledge and thoughts to try and improve our vidding and help other people too.
And YES, you read that right, we like to HELP! No one is born knowing what a VOB file is. Most of us (if not all) asked other vidders for help when we were beginning to make our videos. It's a difficult thing to do and I get the feeling most of you steal just because you're too lazy to go through the whole process.
Well, that certainly doesn't help. We vidders go through a lot of stress just because you guys decided to go the easy way.
That's not fair now, is it?


I'm Di, English is not my first language, and I spent a lot of time writting this post (and probably murdering the English language along the way) just because I'm sick and tired of getting hurt, frustrated, angry and stressed many times in a row, always because of the same crap you make us go through with what you're doing.

I won't let you ruin vidding for us and I won't let you turn something so fun into something so stressful.


No love,
Di...a proud vidder